March 27
Ahh, much better. A day off let me get two play sessions in and I'm happier now. When last I left my poor, overworked, and underpaid guy, he'd successfully proposed to the standoffish girl of his dreams and I was saving up for an expensive new toy, the Seed Maker. It was only a paragraph back for you but three days for me, so a indulge me in a recap.

Well, nothing much has changed for me. Nami is still wandering around doing her stuff and I'm still waking up alone. I'm guessing the marriage is slated for year's end or something, but some indication of when wouldn't hurt. One villager congratulated me on the good news but everyone else is telling me the same stuff, and no new revelations into the hidden village plot have arisen Ah well, I'll keep giving villagers fish until they get more chatty, I guess.

I finally saved up for that Seed Maker I've had my eye on, and it arrived with no instructions. So far I've put a tomato and a watermelon seed inside, and I'm not sure if I'll get one seed or several per veggie, or if they'll hybridize into one watermato or something. Yet another thing to discover as time passes. I'm sensing a trend here.

Finally for today, I hereby award myself the Observational Trophy for Amazing Perception. In the field where you put your cows, sheep, horses, etc. there's a watering trough, and today I clicked on it when I was trying to cut some grass right beside it. It turns out that you can bring your animals over to it and use the brush to wash them. My cow cleaned up quite nicely, and my horse liked the attention but didn't end up looking cleaner. Now it's another task to add to the daily list of things to attend to. No big deal, I'm still finishing up the farm work before noon most days and getting to bed long about midnight-ish.

Whoops, almost forgot. It's been said there are no festivals in the game, but I stumbled on one at the bar. It turns out that every year there's a harvest gathering there for the farming family up the road (Celia, one of the marriageable girls, is part of that family) and a good time was had by all. I wonder how it would have gone if I'd given Celia the Blue Feather?

March 28
Winter! And with winter I get a new village resident, I think. I've got to admit, it rather surprised me, but I think I'm going to go to special pains to keep this guy happy.

*spoiler* *spoiler* *spoiler*

I got a Yeti, which was a hell of a shock let me tell you. I'm ambling about watching the snow come down when up the path I see a shambling white behemoth dragging its knuckles on the ground. What am I to do? I walk up to it and talk, then give it a fish. I think of all my villagers, not counting Nami, this one is going to get an item every day. Just to see what happens.

*end spoiler* *end spoiler* *end spoiler*

All the seeds I've bought so far are graded at B, which is good but not great. I was thinking that with my seed machine maybe I'd have a way to upgrade to A, but no joy. In talking with Takakura (dead father's friend who gets you set up at the beginning of the game and takes care of selling dairy/eggs) he mentions that fertilizing crops makes them better. Okay, time to experiment!

Step 1: Plant seed
Step 2: Fertilize (and it's pricey to do this in anything like bulk, let me tell you!)
Step 3: Wait
Step 4: Harvest A-level crops?

You'd think "Step 5: Profit" would be in there, but it's not. It turns out the Seed Machine, which I got yesterday, turns one vegetable into two seeds. This means that if I want a nice stock of A-level seeds I've got to dump all initial produce into the machine to get a good supply going, and then once I've got that I can sell half, Seed Machine half. Of course, all this is dependent on fertilizer doing what I think it's going to do.

As for what I actually did today, I ran around and did stuff. None of it's too exciting, but like usual in a Harvest Moon game, it was all part of building towards something bigger. I talked to villagers, I finally figured out what it is that Rock kid wants, and I figured out a winning strategy.

One of the villagers lets you play a game against him once a day. You have a large hexagon subdivided into triangles, and the object is to turn all the triangles into you color. You lay down one red line, your opponent lays down one blue line, repeat. When you complete a triangle, or cordon off a set of triangles, it/they change to your color. If there were any lines in the group made up of the opposing color, they all change to the color of the group. It's a fun little strategic aside, and I won my first couple of games today. The prize was nothing major but I was quite happy to finally sort out a strategy.

Continue to: Epilogue | Return to: Days 1 through 5